Behind Trinity Episcopal Church is an empty lot that once served as a baseball field. Home plate was directly under the tall stained glass windows custom made in Connecticut to be the altar’s colorful backdrop.

The window took a beating from stray balls and careless kids who used it for target practice. There were 42 BB holes in the triple-lancet window, according to Topper Tastad, president of the Groton Community Historical Society.

Grant funding helped send the windows off to Winona, Minnesota, where the lead was removed and replaced and the glass was cleaned and repaired in 2016.

The historical society, formed at that time specifically to care for the church, took on an even bigger project two years later when it replaced the rotting wood roofing with steel shingles that will help protect the 138-year-old building.

“It has to be done or there wouldn’t be a building,” said Tastad, who has become the church handyman, making small repairs where needed.

Trinity church has been closed since the 1960s, but volunteers, including Tastad, take great care to preserve the tiny Gothic building that’s changed very little since it was first built.

“I walk by every day and I love the church,” said Betty Breck, who helped research and write grants for the repair projects.

Tastad paused his lawn mowing around the church to give a tour of on a fall day. He enjoys small details in the old furnishings, like the hand-sewn carpet, Latin hymn board signs and the original pump organ.

Along with its stained glass window from Connecticut, Trinity has several ties to the East Coast. In Groton, named for a community in Massachusetts, many of the early townsfolk had connections to New England, according to a short history prepared as the church was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.

“The merchants and prosperous educated middle class comprised Trinity’s congregation, were founders of the town,” it said.

One of the church’s early lay leaders was Yale-educated W.J. Brewster, who was also a book store owner and postmaster in Groton.

The man that designed the church is well known on the East Coast as well. The plans came from famous architect Richard Upjohn, designer of the elaborate Trinity Church on Wall Street in New York City. In 1852, Upjohn published plans for a simple wooden church that young parishes could use as they sprouted across the American West.

Breck came across a copy of Upjohn’s book in her research at Augustana University’s Center for Western Studies. She was pleased to page through the reprinted edition and find drawings that looked very much like the little church in Groton.

“When I found that, I just cried,” she said.

Upjohn-inspired churches were built across the country in the late 1800s, marked by vertical board and batten siding, narrow ached windows and steep roofs. It’s a style that was adopted by many of the 153 Episcopal churches in South Dakota at the time, according to the book “Building South Dakota: A Historical Survey of the State’s Architecture to 1945.” Many were replaced as congregations grew, and the Groton church is said to be the last church of this type in South Dakota.

Now the church has been restored from the ground up. Past projects included putting new mortar between the original foundation stones, repairing plaster inside and replacing wallpaper.

The window project was funded by a grant from the Deadwood Fund for historical preservation and through the Brown County Historical Society that owned the church for more than 40 years.

The roof repair involved another major fundraising effort. The church got another $17,500 from the Deadwood Fund. That was paired with matching funds from the Groton Historical Society and the community. One donation check came from as far away as Alaska, Breck said.

“To have a little church like this designed by a master architect in New York City, people just responded to that,” Breck said.

The church draws visitors from all over, too. A recent summer brought a visitor from Oregon whose great-great uncle had homesteaded 2 miles outside of Groton.

Those wishing to visit the church can call Tastad at 605-846-7607. If he’s not already there doing regular upkeep and maintenance, he’d be happen to open it up to anyone who wants to browse around, he said.

One large repair project that remains at Trinity Episcopal Church is restoring the side windows.

“There’s no end to maintenance,” Tastad said.